Category: Seasonal Celebration
A Recipe for Late Summer Nourishment
Here in the mountains, the waning afternoon light has taken on an earth-warmed hue, like bronze poured over low banked coals. Already a few trees are beginning to fade to the color of ancient paper and there is an overwhelming sense that, even though the snapdragons continue to bloom, things are incrementally beginning to…
Dealing with Seasonal Overwhelm
The trees are deepening their green every day and the flowers are popping off in full symphonic bursts. The wild roses flutter snowlike down the hillside and between the birds, the bees, the peepers and the neighborhood kids there is music every hour of the day. It is a complete summer paradise. And here I…
The Slow Dark Enchantment
Real magic takes time… and a lot of it. Like crystals growing in the deep, the biggest miracles often form far beneath the surface, and need a long fertile stretch of darkness before they can come to light. When the possibility of magic is afoot we will often be asked to slow down so immensely…
A Hymn for Optimism
I’m what you might call an “enthusiastic celebrator.” I can’t help it, I just get a kick out of life a lot of the time. I recently sent my friend a funny gif of Will Ferrell in Elf playing hopscotch with the white lines of a New York crosswalk and she immediately texted me…
Psychedelics + the Ecosystem of Meaning
Autumn is a psychedelic season. More than just a waning golden hour, autumn has its own texture. And just by touching it, our consciousness begins to shift. In our culture psychedelics are often synonymous with “drugs,” exotic substances that blow open the gateways of your perception, concentrates that tip the cup of the world over…
Summer as a Season of Rest
Summer as a time of rest is almost unheard of around these parts. For all those that garden or homestead it can feel as though the tasks are never-ending. And even those who don’t tend the land seem to fill their coffers with well-intended parades of vacation, work projects, or pie making, but…
Thunderstorm Medicine
Like an anxious spike high on the thermometer, a hot summer day can hold a whole lot. The heaviness of the past, the humidity of future-tripping, the density of a too-tightly-packed schedule. It’s life, intensified, with everything being experienced at once. Like the sound of the cicadas rolled into one giant buzz or the…
The Season of Pleasure
In the wheel of the year each season has its distinctive gifts, its own character and flavor. There is a time for hermitage and planting, harvesting, seeking, risking, budgeting and even dying. But it’s only in summer that pleasure takes center stage. Here in the mountains, we are just now tipping into the true…
